New Jersey votes no on expanding casino gambling areas outside Atlantic City

New Jersey gamblers will have to stick to Atlantic City after a measure that would allow casinos in other areas was shot down hard. (Mel Evans/AP)

A referendum to expand New Jersey casino gambling to areas outside of Atlantic City came up snake eyes Tuesday.

The measure died by a 78% to 22% margin.

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That makes a big winner out of Genting, which runs the successful Resorts World casino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Genting bankrolled $9 million of the $15 million campaign to stop the expansion.

If the measure passed, there likely would have been a casino at the Meadowlands, right over the New York border.

"We thought it would have put tens of thousands of jobs at risk in New York and New Jersey and would have been something that destabilized the careful balance in the crowded northeast gaming market," said Michael Levoff, a Genting official who spearheaded the "Trenton's Bad Bet" campaign.

The powerful New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, which represents workers in New York and New Jersey, also spent big fighting the measure.

The use of recreational marijuana is now legal in California, Massachusetts and Nevada. (Image Source Pink/Getty Images/Image Source)

The defeat was not a surprise as polls leading up to the vote showed New Jerseyians overwhelmingly against it, causing the effort's biggest financial backers to pull their ads in late September after spending about $8.5 million.

One of those backers, Jeff Gural, a New York City developer who owns a race track at the Meadowlands, was resigned to the loss, calling it a "missed opportunity" that will be the death of Atlantic City.

"The reality was we just couldn't overcome the message they had that you can't trust Trenton," Gural said.

Meanwhile, voters in California, Massachusetts, and Nevada voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, bringing the total number of states that now allows it to seven.

That means more than 20% of the US population lives in a state that allows the use of pot recreationally.

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Voters in Arizona on Tuesday rejected a push to legalize pot in that state. In Maine, a similar measure was still too close to call.

Meanwhile, Arkansas, Florida, and North Dakota Tuesday voted to approve the legalization of medical marijuana while Montana expanded its program.

Four states had propositions on the ballot to enact tougher gun laws while four had ballot initiatives to raise their minimum wages.